But Reno was still staring at her. “You look tired,” he said. “Did you get any sleep last night?”
“Very little,” Trina admitted. “But I’m fine.”
“Neither one of us are fine,” he said, and Trina realized she had forgotten whom she was talking to. Reno was not the small talk type. He was not that man.
Reno became bold. He didn’t come all this way not to be. He sat down on the lounger beside his wife. It surprised Trina, but Tommy was pleased to see that she allowed it.
“You look tired,” Reno said again as he looked even closer at her. “When was the last time you had something to eat?”
“This morning. We ate. I ate.”
“Good.” Reno could smell her fresh, perfume scent. He saw the smoothness of her brown skin. He glanced down at her breasts, and remembered how wonderful it felt to suck them, and then he felt guilty for thinking that way at a time like this. But he wanted her back. All of her.
He placed his hand on her, and she moved slightly. “Don’t, Reno,” she said, and looked him dead in the eye. His heart slammed against his chest when her big, beautiful, hazel eyes looked at him. Even in her tiredness, she was a lovely sight to behold. But her words were just the opposite. “I’m not ready yet,” she said to him.
And what could he do? Tell her that she didn’t mean it? Remind her that he never touched Amy and Amy even admitted it? Erase all that she’d been through since hooking up with him? He couldn’t do that, and what he could do wasn’t going to help. It was funny, but it took him traveling a thousand miles to realize what Sal tried to tell him in the beginning: he was going to have to give her more time.
And then Dommi saw him. “Daddy!” he cried and Reno, even in his pain, couldn’t help but smile.
“There’s my boy,” he said almost to himself as he stood up and began walking toward the edge of the pool. Dommi swam and splashed his way toward him, with Sophie, thanks to one of the nannies, following behind.
And Reno wanted to cry. His family shouldn’t be here in Seattle, relying on another man to protect them. They should be with him, in Vegas, in their big house and their big pool living their own happy existence. But he didn’t cry. It would break Dommi’s heart if he did. And he’d broken enough hearts already.
“Dommi!” he said excitedly as he knelt down and opened his arms. Dommi pushed out of the pool and ran between his father’s legs into his father’s arms. It was the smell of his children that he always missed, and he became intoxicated in Dommi. And when Sophie made it to him, he smothered her too.
Tommy was watching Trina as Reno held his children. Trina was emotional too, as she wiped away tears. But she was also a woman of a strong resolve and wasn’t going to respond based on emotion alone. As much as Tommy knew it was going to hurt Reno, he was going to have to give her more time.
Then Reno’s cell phone rang. Only it wasn’t his regular phone, which he could ignore and had been ignoring. It was his emergency phone.
“I’ve got to get this, kids,” he said, and answered. He glanced at Trina. She probably thought he was an asshole for answering. But it couldn’t be helped. Nobody called him on his emergency line, unless it was a serious emergency.
“This is Reno,” he said.
Debrosiac was on the other line. “It’s me, boss. Dee.”
“It better be good.”
“We found him.”
Reno’s heart almost stopped. His look changed so decidedly that Trina was concerned. “Where?” Reno asked.
“Indonesia. But we can’t pick him up. We wouldn’t begin to know where to take him. When we get to him, we’ll have to take him out right there and then. And you already told us you and nobody else was taking him out.”
“I’m in Seattle now. I’ll head out as soon as my pilot can get the okay.”
“Call me when you’re landing and I’ll be there,” Debrosiac said, and Reno ended the call.
“You’ve got to go, Daddy?” Dommi said, disappointed.
“Just for a few days,” Reno said. “But I’ll be back.”
“You promise?” Sophia asked.
“I promise,” Reno said.
“That’s my daddy,” Sophia said.
But Dommi was in no mood to play. He left his father’s arms and went to Trina’s. Trina held him and she and Reno looked at each other. Dommi was no fool. He knew something was off in paradise. He just knew it.
Reno kissed Sophia, and gave her to Trina too. Dommi started crying, and because he was crying, Sophia started too. Trina looked up at Reno. “They’ll be okay,” she said. “You be careful.”
Reno nodded. He knew his children were in good hands with Trina, and Trina was in good hands with Tommy.
He shook Tommy’s hand, looked at his splintered family once again, and then left.
Tony Bennett left his heart in San Francisco. He was leaving his in Seattle.
CHAPER NINETEEN
A few days turned into nearly a week as the logistics in Jakarta, Indonesia was nightmarish. Every time they thought they had a way to corner Palameri, a pile of others would show up in the overcrowded city and that moment would fade. And Palameri was no fool either. He surrounded walked with, slept with, surrounded himself with an entourage of innocent women and their children as he offered them food in exchange for their protection. They didn’t know that they were human shields for him, but they were. And only trained eyes like Reno and Debrosiac would realize it.
But they finally caught a break on the sixth day of Reno’s arrival. Palameri let his guard down. He visited this prostitute every couple days, and his entourage would often go in with him. This time, apparently feeling especially horny, he made them wait outside. Reno and Debrosiac came, not with food the way Palameri came at them, but with money. Boatloads of it. More than they could have ever hoped for. And each one of them gladly accepted the cash, grabbed their children, and left Palameri as easily as he had found them.
Debrosiac, then, stood guard, and Reno entered the shack of a house.
They were fucking already. Palameri was naked on top, the lady was naked on the bottom, and the filthy cot was nearly to the floor from the weight and activity. Reno sat there, watching them but thinking about how it would feel to fuck Trina again, until Palameri finally climaxed and pulled his small, limp dick out of the sorry hooker. Reno was astounded that he wore no protection, but then again he wasn’t. This was Palameri he was talking about. This was the man who thought he could kidnap Reno Gabrini’s baby boy and live to tell about it. He was talking about a fool.
The hooker saw Reno first, and jumped from the cot, and then Palameri looked over. When he saw Reno, and Reno smiled and waved, his entire countenance dropped. Because he knew he was done for.
But Reno knew he wasn’t going out without a fight, even as he smiled back at Reno, as if he was giving in, and said “you got me, pal,” as if it was total surrender. But then he reached across the bed for his trousers, and undoubtedly his gun, but Reno pulled his own weapon and didn’t hesitate. He stood up and shot Palameri’s balls off.
The hooker screamed and ran, and Palameri cried out in agony. His hands forgot about any weapon and tried to smother what remained of his bleeding balls.
But Reno wasn’t finished with him. One shot and he was done wasn’t going to capture how he truly felt about this prick.
As Debrosiac grabbed the hooker who tried to flee out of the house and came inside the house with her as his hostage, Reno grabbed Palameri and pushed him off of the bed, his body rolling on the dirt floor. And then Reno took his expensive shoe and stomped the shit out of Palameri’s face. No-where else, just his face. Reno stomped and stomped. Palameri’s nose was the first to collapse, then one and the other eyeball. But Reno kept stomping. The blood was all over his shoe, and his pants, as he stomped and stomped and stomped and stomped. He thought about Dommi in that dungeon of a place, terrified and crying for Reno, and he stomped. He was killing Palameri for other shit that had nothing to do with hi
m, like his tattered marriage, but he kept stomping. He stomped until Palameri, who was already dead, was unrecognizable.
And Reno just stood there. He was breathing so hard that he could hardly control himself. The hooker was crying and covering her face. She couldn’t bear what she had just witnessed. And Reno was sorry about that. But he wasn’t sorry about Palameri. He wasn’t sorry at all.
He pulled out his handkerchief, wiped the splatters of blood that had gotten on his face, and headed for the exit, still trying to regulate his breathing. “Take pictures,” Reno ordered Debrosiac. “I want every prick with any thoughts to see what their end was going to be if they fucked with me and my family.”
“Yes, sir,” Debrosiac said. He didn’t ask about the hooker, because he knew what he had to do to her.
And when Reno walked out, he looked at Palameri and shook his head. “Vicious,” he said to the hooker, then fucked her, and strangled her to death. He hated to do it, but they had to get out of Jakarta alive. She was a talker and a stone that could turn on them. No stones unturned was Reno’s motto, and it now Debrosiac’s too. He strangled the life out of her.
He took pictures afterwards, not of the hooker, but of Palameri, and continued to shake his head. Reno would go to the ends of the earth to get his revenge. But these assholes still tried him.
Debrosiac couldn’t understand why, as his camera clicked and clicked and clicked.
Reno arrived back at his Vegas estate the next day. He had spoken to Trina and the children his first night in Indonesia but the children had cried so much, and became so upset by his absence, that he and Tree both decided it was best that he didn’t phone until he was back stateside. But Tommy kept him posted. She and the kids were okay, was the most he was telling Reno, and while Reno was so far away, that was enough for him to hear.
But now he was back in Vegas. Not Seattle. Because he was determined to give Tree her space. The way he took out Palameri, the violence of it, made him realize what it meant to be attached to him. It made him realize how Trina could be having second thoughts about their marriage. Mick Sinatra often said how he wasn’t a good man. Well Reno wasn’t either. He should have realized it long ago. He realized it in Jakarta.
The silence of his home welcomed him with a coldness he felt he deserved. And he thought about Jimmy as he walked in. He had spoken to Jimmy a few times during his time away, and Jimmy was unforgiving too. He was upset. He wanted to know why his siblings and stepmother were in Seattle. “What did you do, Pop?” was how Jimmy put it. “Why did Mom leave?” Reno didn’t have a good answer. He wasn’t getting into it with Jimmy. He, instead, asked about Val. She was fine, Jimmy said, and then he made him smile as he always could. “Whatever you did,” Jimmy said, “I love you, though.”
Reno still smiled about that. Jimmy was going to stay in his corner. He didn’t know about the others, but Jimmy would.
But when Reno walked around the foyer, and into the living room area, he stopped where he stood. Because Trina was home, sitting in that chair she always sat in, her legs over the arm of the chair, her iPad on her lap, her eyeglasses on her face. Reno didn’t know what to think.
“Hey,” she said when she saw him, and removed her glasses.
But Reno was still floored. “What are you . . . I mean, you’re home?”
Trina nodded. “Yes,” she said.
He wanted to ask if she was home for good, but he was too afraid. He would take whatever he could get. “The children,” he said. “Where are they?”
“Upstairs,” Trina said. “Sleep.”
Reno’s heart wanted to soar. “Are you, are they, I mean . . .” He looked at her.
She sat down her iPad, and her eyeglasses, and got up. She walked over to him. “It’s permanent, Reno,” she said. They were now toe-to-toe. Reno was staring at her. “Thanks for giving me space,” she said, “but don’t worry. I’m back. And I’ll never leave again.”
Reno’s heart soared.
“I’m so sorry, Tree. I lied to protect you, but that didn’t make it right. You don’t need that kind of protection. I know it now.”
Trina placed her hand on the side of his unshaven face. “The reason I’ll never leave you again is because I can’t. I know it now. Even if every lie Amy told on you was true, every single lie, I would not have been able to leave you.”
Reno placed both his hands on her beautiful face.
“I know that makes me a chump,” she said, and Reno was shaking his head. “I know I lose all power by telling my man something like that. But it’s the truth.” Tears were in her eyes. “I can’t leave you, Reno. You’re going to have to do me right.”
Reno’s heart dropped. “Oh, Tree,” he said, wrapping her in his arms, his hard eyes watery too. “I’ll do right by you every day of my life. You and our children.”
“Even Dommi?” she asked.
Reno laughed. “Even Dommi,” he said. And Trina smiled too.
EPILOGUE
They raced to the hospital so fast that Trina was certain one of the many cops they passed would pull them over. But nobody did. Trina was grateful, she didn’t think they could take much more drama, as Reno raced through the streets of Vegas with that controlled out-of-control way he was known for. By the time they arrived at the hospital, and hurried through the automatic doors holding hands, their hearts were hammering.
“Which way?” Reno asked.
“This way,” Trina said, and they ran down corridor after corridor and took the elevator upstairs. It was Val. Jimmy had phoned not thirty minutes ago. And they were both praying.
Trina was praying out loud. “Let her be alright,” she kept saying. “Please let her be alright!”
She was alright. She was better than alright. When Reno and Trina walked into her hospital room, she was still holding her brand new, bouncing baby girl. It was a high risk pregnancy. Val had been bed-ridden through most of it. The doctors weren’t even certain if the shooting she endured before her pregnancy could have an affect too. But she was fine. Trina and Reno praised God.
Jimmy and Buddy Wellstone were in the room with her. Jimmy took the baby from Val, and handed her to Reno first.
“Here, Daddy,” Jimmy said, handing the child over. “You hold her.”
Trina smiled. Reno did too. He knew all about babies. He’d had enough of his own. And he picked this one up with a lot of care too. Because she was special. She was his first grandchild. He was blown away.
“Hey, little one,” he said as he held and bounced her. “You know who I am? You know who I am? I’m your grandmother,” Reno said, and everybody looked at him. “That’s right. That’s who I am.”
But when he realized they were looking at him, he wondered why. “What?” he asked them.
“You’re that child’s grandmother, Reno,” Trina asked. “Really?”
Jimmy was stifling a laugh. “Something you aren’t telling us, Pop?” he asked his father.
“I didn’t say grandmother, what are you talking? I didn’t say that. Did I?”
“You did,” Trina said, nodding her head.
Reno shook his head and smiled. “Help me, Lord,” he said. “I think I’m crazy in love.”
And Trina, Jimmy, and Val couldn’t agree more.
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Table of Contents
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
> EPILOGUE
Reno and Trina: In the Shadows of Love, Book 12 Page 17
